The two builders (in yellow and stripe shirts) with crime branch officials. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, June 14: Officials of the state crime branch’s economic offences wing have arrested two builder brothers for cheating over a hundred people of around Rs 2 crore after promising to provide them land and selling plots with false documents.

A crime branch official said the accused duo, Chandrasekhar Pati, 40, and Niranjan Pati, 45, who were managing director and director of one Ascend Creations Private Limited, respectively, were arrested last night. They have been sent to jail today after their bail pleas were rejected.

The police also seized a Honda City car from the accused persons, besides important documents and computer hard disks from their office.

Sources said the brothers had opened the company in 2007 at Sastri Nagar. Later, they shifted to IRC Village at Nayapalli. They had put advertisements in newspapers inviting people to purchase land from them in various areas of Bhubaneswar. They had even sold land to a number of people using forged documents.

The crime branch got first complaint against them from one Purna Chandra Rath, who had paid Rs 10 lakh in instalments to get a 10,000sqft plot at Paikarapur. The accused persons executed sale deeds in the name of the complainant’s two sons. But when Rath went to take possession of the land, he found that the Pati brothers did not have ownership of the land they had sold him.

“The accused persons had created forged and fabricated documents and used them to cheat the complainant. He lodged a complaint with us on June 12, and we registered a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, along with the Orissa Protection of Interests of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act, 2011,” said deputy inspector general of the economic offences wing Rajesh Kumar.

Later, the branch got over hundred complaints from the people, who had been cheated by the company to the tune of over Rs 2 crore. Besides, during the search, the officials found that the company had cheated many more people and the amount of money involved would be much more.